Today, a first edition of Pride and Prejudice goes under the hammer at
Sotheby’s. Estimated price, £100,000. You could buy a decent husband for
that, in Jane Austen’s day.

Lately, however, her reputation has taken a knock, with scholars revealing our most decorous lady novelist couldn’t spell, couldn’t punctuate, and spoke like a Wurzel. Personally, my adoration of the great Jane has soared with this heartening news.

If even she couldn’t handle a semi-colon, doesn’t that give hope to the rest of us? And, if her style is now known to be free-flowing and uninterrupted, doesn’t it bring her closer to modern ways of speech? If I were the lucky buyer of that first edition, I would shake the pages carefully, to see if any early drafts fall out: “Be not !alarmed! mdm @ the inteligence i bare, nor @ the feelings that i hav entatained 4u since i got 2 cu at those balls lol. i am gr8ly vexed @ yr dissmissal of my caracter as 2 proud yeah but no but my in10tions r pure i hav gsoh + am in possession of a gd 4tune and am there4 in want of a wifi. i remain yr obedeint ect Da C.”

And the prize for best fiction goes to...

In the past few weeks, I have been swamped with emails from friends and acquaintances, pleading with me to check over their sons’ and daughters’ UCAS Personal Statements. You know the form. Their beloved Joshua has five hundred words in which to convince his chosen university that he is a world-class intellect who has longed to be a historian since birth. “At the age of sixteen months, I learned to walk up the steps of the Chapter House in Wells Cathedral. This kindled a lifelong interest in the relationship between church and state, with particular reference to the early medieval period...”

Not only does Joshua have to persuade admissions tutors that he is a budding Simon Schama, he also needs to serve up a feast of extra-curricular interests. “Pausing briefly to polish my Polish, I plan to sail (Master of Yachts Certificate 2007) aboard a catamaran of reclaimed cardboard to the Gulf of Oman, where I will supply alternative energy sources to Pirates for Peace.”

Our education system is full of lunacies. None is barmier than the Great Personal Statement Race. Most of the statements get closer editing from parents, private tutors and journalist friends than the Booker Prizewinner, and they are all experimental works of fiction. Very few seventeen-year-olds know who they are, let alone who they want to be. Yet, increasingly, they are invited to puff themselves up and deliver preposterous boasts like those prats on The Apprentice who say things like, “I’m Stuart Baggs, 'the Brand’.”

When I was doing Oxbridge entrance back in the late-Seventies, I didn’t have any interests. My sole interest was trying to read as much world literature as I could, in order to plug the gaping holes in my learning.

I feel sorry for Joshua, but I feel even sorrier for the tutors. How are they meant to block out the sound of trumpets being blown, and get a firm idea of the child behind the nonsense? The question is not, can Joshua get four A-stars and play polo on yak-back? The question is: can he think?

Times must be tough for Cherie...

Cherie Blair sold her husband’s autograph for £10 on eBay. No sniggering at the back, please. Times are tough for everyone. The poor Blairs are down to their last seven houses.

As Tony has made an estimated £20 million since leaving Downing Street, Cherie’s online bargains grow ever more fascinating. They read less like a frugal woman’s shopping list than The Hyacinth Bucket Guide to Joining the Upper Middle Classes. A silver butter knife and glass dish for £24.99 I can just about understand, but a 10-piece fish cutlery set for £34.99? Ye gods, who last bought a fish knife? The fish knife is more extinct than the Sony Walkman.

How does a high-powered QC like Cherie find the time to upload endless photographs of items onto eBay, which may fetch as much as 20 quid? That’s probably what she charges clients for 10 seconds of her time. As for flogging one of the 18 watches believed to have been given to the Blairs by that oily old letch, Silvio Berlusconi, there is a place to unload the spoils of office, Mrs Blair. It’s called a charity shop.